SGJ Podcast #40: Giving Thanks (and Other Random S#!t)

With the Thanksgiving holiday happening this week in the U.S., I wanted to talk to a bunch of folks about the games we’re thankful for, so I sent out word to the various places I hang out to join us on the show this week, and joining Jim and I are the following guests/panelists:

We talked about not only games we’re thankful for, but a ton of other random crap, and it made for a fun show. So much fun I don’t even have time/energy to put together show notes, we talked about so much. ;)

This was fun. I think I actually said more after the show than during, but hey. Some space games I’m thankful for that weren’t mentioned: Emperor of the Fading Suns, Space Empires IV, and System Shock 2.

EFS – Suffers from incomplete features and poor AI. That can be alleviated somewhat by modding, which the game supports reasonably well. Never tried a multiplayer game due to the PBEM nature.

SEIV – One of my favorite 4x titles. AI is generally poor, but sometimes it can do unexpectedly intelligent things. Some good mods available, too.

SS2 – A classic. Perhaps not on many people’s space game lists, but it takes place mainly on two ships in space so I’m counting it. A serious pain to mod, but worth the suffering. There are also some great fan missions and campaigns out there.

Definitely thankful for the resurgence of space games thanks to indie devs. I’ve finally got something to look forward to again, yay!

Frontier (on the Amiga) – Elite was big but Frontier was huge. It had entire Galaxy, complete solar systems and you could land on planets!. Always wanted, as a side project, to reach the galactic core. Might fire it up one day…

Millenium 2.2 and Deuteros (also on Amiga) – the first spacey “research/build/fight” fix.

I-war (or Independence War for you yanks) – for being the definite “small capship” sim.

And finally I’d like to thank Chris Roberts for being the mad irreplacable doctor Frankenstein that jumpstarted the corpse of spacesim genre back to life. Whatever will come out of Star Citizen (though it had better be great, or torches and pitchforks will come into play!), it has already shown everyone that there is an audience for this type of games.

On the Next Podcast…

12/6 - 5:30 PM Pacific - On the next podcast, we'll sit down with the host of the Upper Memory Block Podcast and hash out the classic X-Wing Series!! Be sure to tune in on YouTube, Twitch or Beam, and be sure to check the calendar for even more upcoming shows!

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